


What Remains

by cesau



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Einherjar - Freeform, Gen, Pointless, implied Ike/Soren, sort of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 05:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12101394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cesau/pseuds/cesau
Summary: He has forgotten everything, but he still knows how to fight. The rest will come in time.





	What Remains

**Author's Note:**

> “It's fun to buy Einherjar, but it's also sad because they don't have feelings.”
> 
> I may have taken some creative liberties with how Einherjar work here. Like, a lot of them.

He wakes up to a strange world, empty-handed and empty-headed. He knows only enough to know that he knows nothing.

“This is Ike, the Radiant Hero?” a curious voice asks. A strange woman stands before him, wild white tresses spilling over odd, scaly armor. She holds a card in her hand. She is staring right at him.

Is he Ike? The name sounds right. He opens his mouth to try it out for himself, but no sound comes forth. He frowns. That isn’t right. But trying again yields the same results.

“What is he doing?” the woman says, looking profoundly uncomfortable. She turns to the tall, stern-faced man next to her. “Is he trying to speak?”

“Einherjar don’t speak,” the man says, so Ike stops trying.

“Xander, I don’t like this,” the woman says.

“This is war, little princess,” he replies. “We do what we must.”

She stares mournfully at the card in her hand and nods her acceptance. Then a bright light seeps forth, and Ike ceases to be.

* * *

The next time he comes to, it is on the battlefield, in the midst of a skirmish. Instantly and without thought, he sinks his sword into the unprotected gut of the soldier standing before him, who falls with wide eyes and a mouth gone slack with shock.

The sword he carries now is wrong. Is it too light? He shifts his grip unhappily. This is not his sword.

He turns at the sound of a startled gasp behind him and sees the white-haired woman on the ground. One hand holds that card from before. The other is clasped around her middle, red blood spilling through her feeble attempt to hold torn skin together.

“Thank...you…” she gasps.

He doesn’t know why she says this. He can’t ask. But the man from before is headed this way, others following close behind, and she looks relieved for it. Until they arrive, Ike continues to fend off her attackers, cutting them down without thought.

He’s not sure why he does that, either.

* * *

After the battle, there is no white light and he doesn’t disappear. When the rest march on, the woman and her army, he follows, and they end up at a castle unlike anything else, with sprawling, colorful grounds and a bright sky that serves only as a thin facade against the starry abyss beyond. He has no benchmark with which to compare it, but it looks wrong. Beautiful and wrong.

They arrive there and the others go their separate ways, leaving him alone with the woman who has been there each time he was called to this world. She stares at him and at the card she still holds in her hand. He waits. What else can he do?

“Thank you for saving me, Ike,” she says at last. His name is the only thing that feels real here, and he decides he likes to hear it. His name is right, even if this world, these people, the sword at his side, are not.

“My name is Corrin,” she continues. Names are important, so he’ll remember hers. Corrin frowns.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asks. He stares. He doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t know how to answer. She sighs and shakes her head. That’s an answer, isn’t it? He imitates the action, shaking his head back and forth slowly.

“Wait – then you can, or you can’t? Or are you just mimicking me?” She raises one hand in the air, and he watches. She hops on one foot, and he stares.

“Okay then. This means yes-” She nods. “-and this means no.” She shakes her head. “Do you understand?”

He nods, and she smiles uncertainly. “I don’t really know what you can or can’t do, but...this castle is a safe place. Please make yourself at home here, if you're able.”

Home? He wishes he could remember home. It’s close to another good word.

* * *

The others eat and sleep and train and talk. He can’t do any of it.

He can fight, at least, but he never gets any stronger.

* * *

Their faces all blend together, and besides Corrin, he can never remember their names. That, or they never told him in the first place. Time is blurry, too. He can’t remember if these are things he’s forgotten or if he never knew to begin with.

He reminds himself, _I am Ike_ , because that is all he has.

It’s all he has until the day a posh-looking young man walks up to Corrin and asks, “Sister, did you have time to read those reports?”

The fog parts and he sees not a white-haired stranger but a girl he knows, one with brown hair and blue eyes and a childishly bright smile. He thinks fog-rain- _Mist!_ , that’s his sister, and where is Mist? Where has she gone, because now she is the stranger again, and he briefly forgets that stranger’s name, but names are important and that is Corrin.

He’s afraid right away that he’ll forget Mist too, but even as he fails to conjure up her image in his mind’s eye, the name resonates there like fact and he knows he won’t forget this truth, either: he is Ike, and his sister is Mist. This becomes his new mantra, and he cradles it close to his heart.

He is Ike, and his sister is Mist.

* * *

From that point on, there is a change, subtle but surely there. He feels things now that he couldn’t before, thinks beyond yeses and nos. He wanders through the castle grounds and he sees things that otherwise might have passed him by. For only an instant at a time, a face will stand out to him, or he will truly understand the words another person speaks, or he will simply look around, and he reacts.

He decides he likes the wooden clack of training swords meeting mid-clash, the smell of roasting meat, the sight of birds flying free in the sky.

And he dislikes flowery language, sweet perfumes, and fancy clothes, mostly because he can’t understand why others prefer them.

He likes when the castle’s residents cram together in the small mess hall and it gets loud and lively. He likes the peaceful, quiet nights in the open fields as well.

He doesn’t like the periods after a costly battle, when no one speaks, but their worries scream through the silence anyway.

He doesn’t like the feeling that all of these things are only echoes of a reality that has fallen out of his grasp.

* * *

“Are you prepared to fight Father?” Corrin asks her brother one day.

Ike is surprised by the emergence of a new feeling: anticipation, and then the onslaught of anguish, anger, and regret that follows. _Will we fight Father?_ he thinks, and then, _But that’s not possible any more._ Then he is confused again, because why do these strangers want to fight his father? Until he remembers, no, Corrin meant her own father, not his.

But who was his father? He cannot think of a face or a voice, and it frustrates him. He clenches his right fist – his sword hand – and remembers: that is where his memory lies. His father trained him to fight. Every time he has held a blade, he has remembered his father, even when he couldn’t recall his own name.

A name. He cannot think of his father’s name. But the thought comes, quite suddenly, that names can change. Names are important, but names can change.

He is Ike, and his sister is Mist, and his father taught him to wield a sword.

* * *

He is wandering around the castle one day when he finds himself staring at a too-small mage with long, dark hair and a youthful face that belies her true age (they’ll all get older but she’ll stay just the same, isn’t that how it goes?). She scowls at all who pass her by, focused on the tome she holds in her hands, and the lines that expression make in her forehead crease the strange marking present there.

And even as he watches her, she transforms, becomes a little taller, features sharper and more masculine, shadow of a hesitant smile, and the name is on the tip of his tongue. The image sees him staring and the face turned on him is completely blank, disinterested.

He doesn’t expect the sudden hurt. He thinks, _You’re not supposed to look at me like that._ As the image fades and the woman returns, he thinks, _You’re not supposed to look like that._

“What an interesting phantom you are,” the woman muses, voice pitched high like a bell, and the illusion shatters completely.

He frowns as the frustration sets in, certain there is something he missed. Names are important, even if they can change. He wants to know this one.

* * *

Sometimes, it's as if he walks two worlds at once. First, he sees the bland, nondescript faces of the castle's true inhabitants, and then he blinks and finds himself surrounded by faces he knows with names he has forgotten, the shadows of a lost memory. And as soon as they appear, they are gone again, and he can't recall a single one.

* * *

There is a man in the group unlike any others, whose ears stick up like an animal's, which fits well with his wolfish tail. The sight of him intrigues Ike, and he starts to follow him around without knowing why. (Perhaps because he has already gotten Mist from Corrin, and he doesn't like the dismissive look in the mage's eyes.)

The feeling he gets from this man is different from the rest. In him, he sees a multitude of faces, feels the resurgence of many words, not all of them names. He knew people like this once, and it seems important somehow.

“Come on, leave me alone already,” the man whines one afternoon when Ike follows him out past the castle gates. They are in a wide field of flowers, the sun bright overhead. Ike pays it no mind. He keeps his gaze on the strangely familiar wolf-man and wishes he could ask what his kind is called. There is a word for it, he knows.

“Urgh, you're so creepy,” the man complains, nose scrunched up. His tail is wagging when he asks, “Whaddya want with me anyhow? Did someone spill the beans about my secret treasure? Well I'm not sharing, so back off!”

He talks too fast, Ike thinks. He can understand every word, but it's not right. Or is it? Is he remembering someone else again?

“Fiiine,” the man whines again, “I _guess_ you can come along. ...Not like you can tell anyone about it anyway. But I'm watching you!”

Ike follows him to a strange pit in the middle of a field, filled with desiccated corpses and bright white bones. The man calls it his treasure, and Ike thinks he has forgotten many things, but he knows that word is wrong here.

“Heh, this is all pretty great, right?” Ike remembers that he can shake his head and that is an answer. The man crosses his arms and sticks his nose up in the air. “Meh, whaddyou know about treasure anyway? It _is_ great! Not my fault you're too dumb to get it.”

He doesn't sound angry when he says it, although Ike is certain 'dumb' is not a kind word. And as he thinks of it, he feels an itch at the back of his mind, and he knows a memory is waiting there. Yet it fades before he can catch it, and all that remains is a sense of frustration.

For a little while, he watches the man roll around in the things he calls treasure, and he looks content. And then he stops moving and closes his eyes. Ike waits patiently for him to move again, but he rolls over once and then stops again, and the only change is that his breathing has slowed.

Ike sits in the grass and watches him. The man looks peaceful, lying there in the sunlight, though the idea of doing the same makes Ike feel almost uncomfortable. He thinks it's strange, to see someone sleeping during the day. The longer he watches, the more he feels that itch start to return again, and of all the words bubbling up beneath the barrier that is his mind, _cat nap_ is what breaks through.

He doesn't know what it means. The memories have never come to him so broken before, and he's never had to wonder what they meant; the understanding has always been instinctual. But _cat nap_ is such a strange combination, and while his mind knows what a 'cat' is and what a 'nap' is, he can't imagine what the two have to do with each other, or with the man sleeping in front of him.

But it brings him a sense of comfort despite the confusion, and he closes his eyes and breathes deep. For the first time, he focuses on that place in his mind where the memories needle at him, and instead of waiting for a spark, he tries to create one. He thinks about the wolf-man and everything he's done to trigger that itch, plays his movements over and over again in his mind until he's frustrated and exhausted but finally, finally, he feels the pull return. He grabs at it before it can fade away, tunes out everything but the sensation of it in his mind.

And he's rewarded, because the face he imagines is no longer a stranger's – it belongs to someone he knows, smiling lazily and laughing at a joke Ike is certain he didn't understand even before all of this, just as he's certain it didn't bother him then, either.

And suddenly there is an entire sea of faces flooding his mind, passing quickly but he recognizes every one on some level. People with the features of animals, and the thought doesn't strike him as strange even though some part of him tells him that this difference means something, both more and less than it should. But he sees them all and is glad for it, even if the only one he can name is that first: the grinning man with the ears of a cat and laughter in his mismatched eyes.

When he opens his eyes, he feels a greater relief than he can recall ever having experienced. Even as most of the things he's remembered begin to fade back into the recesses of his mind, he is content, because the most important pieces remain.

His name is Ike, his sister is Mist, his father taught him to wield a sword, and he has many friends, the best of which was a man named Ranulf.

* * *

Each memory feels like a piece of himself returned, bringing him closer to some greater understanding, and he suspects that he's very near to it now. 

But there's still something missing, so he begins to follow the little mage again. She tends to wander the same sections of the castle, the ones with books and few other people, and Ike is aware enough now to realize he is out of place there. But in his mind he has himself, and his sister, and his father, and his friend, and he knows there is still something missing. The mage is holding a piece of himself; he just isn't sure what that piece is.

He knows only that it seems important to retrieve it now, and that he wants it, almost desperately.

Only, despite his best efforts, he cannot recreate the peace that led him to the revelation in the field while the man with the wolf ears slept. The mage is unlike that man, unwilling to ignore his presence, and still every time she looks at him he sees only that painful disinterest and nothing else beyond it.

It is only his desperation that keeps him in her shadow, waiting for the moments when she looks away and the barest hint of a memory will begin to surface. But it's never long enough.

It goes on like that until the day she finally confronts him with a heavy sigh and a curious look.

“You seem quite determined to follow my every move,” she says. “How curious. Is it the magic, I wonder? Einherjar are inherently magical creatures, I suppose. Can you sense the curse I carry?”

She steps toward him, and Ike does not move. He watches her, grateful that for once her look is not dismissive, but this open curiosity isn't right, either. He tilts his head to keep her in sight as she stops, standing right before him, much shorter. Too short, he thinks, and the thought only frustrates him further.

“Curious,” she repeats. She reaches for his arm and pinches his skin between her nails, and he flinches.

“So you feel pain, do you?” she says. She reaches for him once more and he steps back reflexively. “And you learn as well. What else can you do, I wonder?” 

From then on, she doesn't seem to mind his presence. The looks she directs his way are not contemptuous or dismissive, only vaguely contemplative, but it still is not what he wants to see. And she stares at him often, now, with that curious gaze, and when he stares back, he sees only the strange woman mage and not even a hint of the thing he is searching for.

He stares at her and thinks of all the things he knows, his own self and his sister and his father and his friend, and he thinks they're all connected, to each other and to this thing he still hasn't found. His inability to make that connection begins to wear on him, and it is all he can think of.

For as much time as they spend together, the mage rarely speaks to him, and Ike prefers it that way. Her voice is only another distraction, a reminder of what is wrong rather than those rare fragments of what is right. But she does speak again, one day.

“You want something from me,” she says. She is sitting at a table in the archives, a heavy book in front of her. She hasn't turned the pages in what seems like a very long time, and Ike thinks that means something, though he can't recall what. He puts it out of his mind as she closes the book with a soft thud. She looks over her book and directly at him, curious.

“You want something from me,” she repeats. “Isn't that right?”

Ike stares. He does want, and he's not sure what, but he knows it is nothing she can give. He has the vague notion that she should realize this. She hums, and it startles him.

“I've upset you,” she says. “An Einherjar who feels...is that what you are? How very strange. It's subtle, but your expression changed just then.”

And something in her words reignites his dormant memory, only the faintest hint of it, but it is there and he anxiously waits for more, for her strange image to fade into something he recognizes. Although nothing happens, he does not turn away, and he is determined to rediscover that patience from the fields and to be rewarded for it.

Still, there is nothing.

The mage does not move. She seems unbothered by his gaze now. She is silent for a moment, before she says again, “How strange.”

And then she laughs softly, the strictly held lines of her face morphing into a nearly careless amusement, and Ike is caught not by her smile but by her eyes, open and honest and there is only that split second before their color shifts into a wine red and from there, every other change follows until he can clearly see what he's been chasing.

In his time here, he has felt relief and comfort and happiness, and he feels them all again now, stronger, as he stares at the man before him, and the sense that this is something _right_ , that this memory is a vital part of himself. And he forgets that it _is_ a memory, raises his hand and tries to reach out, even opens his mouth to speak because he's forgotten that he can't– 

And the sound of a low trumpet rings through the castle. Ike blinks, and when he opens his eyes, he sees the mage woman, looking at him curiously.

“We must be under attack,” she says, and then she turns and leaves.

Ike follows, confused. Once again he's lost the image, and the name on his lips. But there remains that feeling, that sense of right and something akin to warmth within him. And he knows that feeling will not fade, and that it is all he needs to conjure up that memory again.

Next time, he thinks. Next time, he will learn the name.

* * *

But there is no next time.

Shortly after the battle at the castle, Corrin marches her army to another fight, this one away from the strange realm with the impossible sky and into a less startling world that is equally unfamiliar to Ike.

But fighting is something Ike knows. He pays little mind to his surroundings, to the forest they wander into. Every battlefield is the same in the end.

And this one is the same, too, until he sees the enemy.

They're not unlike the wolf-man, with their fur-covered ears and tails. At the sight of them, Ike hesitates. In his mind, he sees Ranulf and all the others he knew once, people he fought beside, people he would have given his life for. People like the ones before him now.

He drops his sword, ignoring Corrin's calls, and he turns away from the battle. He cannot be made to fight these people.

He is lost still in those memories when the white light consumes him, and his thoughts stop entirely.

* * *

He wakes only once more, in the same room as the first time. Just as it was then, Corrin stands before him, her brother at her side. She looks at him and hesitates to speak, but she finds her voice eventually. Ike waits patiently, because there is nothing else he can do.

“Do you recognize me?” she asks. Ike nods, and she suddenly looks very sad. She turns to her brother, who shakes his head.

“He's the same then, little princess,” the brother says. “There's nothing to be done. An Einherjar who disobeys orders is dangerous. You know what you have to do.”

“But he's saved me-”

“And he might have gotten us all killed.”

They are silent then, but their silence does not give Ike enough time to understand what's been said. The words, he recognizes, but he cannot guess their meaning. He thinks these two are unhappy with him, but he hasn't done anything wrong. It occurs to him that they are upset because he would not fight their unjust battle, and he wants to tell them _they_ were wrong, wants to ask them how they could possibly think otherwise.

For the first time, he feels anger, but it passes quickly, and soon he can't recall why he felt that way to begin with. He watches Corrin and her brother as _they_ watch _him_ , and finally, Corrin sighs.

“I know,” she says. “I'll do it.”

She holds that card in her hand, and she glances down at it once. Then she looks up at him, and she is still sad, but there is iron in her gaze.

“I'm sorry,” she says, and she tears the card in two.

And there is that light, and every part of Ike – his name, his memory, the things he has yet to recover – ceases to be. He fades from the world, and nothing remains.


End file.
